George Antheil was an interesting character (not to mention Hedy Lamarr)

"He also wrote a column in Esquire and, in 1940, anonymously published The Shape of the War to Come, a book astutely predicting the probable course of the Second World War.

Another subject of intense interest to him was endocrinology, about which he also wrote articles and, finally, a whole book. His expertise prompted film star Hedy Lamar ("the most beautiful woman in the world"), who lived nearby, to consult him when she wanted to have a breast enlargement. (Or so Antheil claims in his autobiography, which dedicates a whole chapter to the episode.)

. . . For some time Lamarr had been taking an interest in the latest discoveries in radio and communications technology, aroused through listening in on the discussions of her first husband, weapons magnate Fritz Mandl. She designed plans for radio-controlled torpedoes to be deployed in the fight against the Nazis and then, with Antheil, devised a novel method of encoding information to protect signals from enemy jamming.

The "Secret Communication System" patented by Lamarr and Antheil in 1942 enabled signals to hop from frequency to frequency in order to guard against unauthorised access. (Lamarr is said to have had this idea during a conversation with Antheil, during which he was playing the piano and continually changing keys.)

Antheil's contribution was to work out how to synchronise the signals between transmitter and receiver. For this he used perforated strips of paper like the ones he had used to synchronise the mechanical pianos in his Ballet mecanique. The transmitted signals had 88 frequencies to shift among, corresponding to the 88 keys of the piano; but transmission was possible only if the transmitter and receiver possessed identical perforated strips; otherwise only fragments of a message could be intercepted.

. . . Not until our own day, with the advent of satellite technology, modems and the cellular phone, were the full ramifications of this invention recognised. In 1997 Lamarr and Antheil were awarded the Pioneer Prize of California's Electronic - Frontier Foundation. Admittedly neither inventor ever earned a penny out of their patent, which ran out after seventeen years and was not renewed. Antheil died in 1959 at the age of fifty-nine, Hedy Lamarr in January 2000 at eighty-nine."